[Mesa-dev] [PATCH] autotools: Deprecate the use of autotools

[Matt Turner]

On Wed, Dec 19, 2018 at 10:32 AM Ilia Mirkin <imirkin at alum.mit.edu> wrote:
>
> On Wed, Dec 19, 2018 at 10:25 AM Matt Turner <mattst88 at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > On Wed, Dec 19, 2018 at 8:06 AM Ilia Mirkin <imirkin at alum.mit.edu> wrote:
> > >
> > > On Wed, Dec 19, 2018 at 1:01 AM Matt Turner <mattst88 at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > > WTF would you have us do?
> > >
> > > Same thing as for any change with an impact this wide --
> > >
> > > 1. Identify stakeholders. In this case, probably the sub-project
> > > maintainers, major contributors, and a smattering of distro
> > > maintainers.
> > > 2. Make them happy, or at least get them, as a group, to agree that
> > > it's "good enough".
> >
> > So we're trying to get better coverage than what you're suggesting.
> >
> > > 3. Apply.
> > >
> > > This is the point at which you can make autotools less visible. We're
> > > not at that point yet.
> >
> > Ilia, it's an extra flag. I think you'll survive.
>
> It's an advertising strategy for meson (hello world, check this out,
> it's going to be the default soon). It can be done at the final stage.
> We're not at that stage.

It's an attempt to get testing from users that might not know about it
yet. It's not as simple as advertising. If you're confused about the
intention of the patch, consider that it's from Gert who has not been
enthusiastic about removing autotools.

> We're at the stage of "hello community, we'd like to replace
> autotools", and the community coming back to you with feedback.

People have been using Meson quite successfully for more than a year
now. It's now used in Gentoo's mesa ebuild for six months and is used
in the stable version. Your claim is subjective, but I think it's
pretty clear that it's not accurate.

Regardless of all of that, what you're suggesting is only marking
autotools as deprecated (i.e., this patch) after all known problems
with the Meson build are fixed. At that point in 3 months down the
line if we get another bug report from a user that only learned of
Meson from this patch, you're going to advocate for keeping autotools
for another release. Rinse, repeat.

We're simply trying to get the feedback from users sooner. And the
cost to you is very small: Use an extra flag. It's not a burden.